Hermitcraft Randomness - S7 Oneshots

It's Okay To Take Breaks - Bdubs x Doc

(WC: 839
Category: Fluff (ABOUT TIME), hurt/comfort
Warnings: None

I missed writing lighthearted shippy fluff so much. And banter, too. Holy frick

Some platonic Bdoc for y'all's souls! I speedran this a few minutes ago--it was supposed to be in OTP Drabbles Part 3 but I think we can all agree 800 words is NOT a drabble lmaooo

Enjoy!)

When the tunnel bore machine blew up, Doc was ready to throw hands and give up right then and there.

The machine wasn't complicated--it was long, but the design was tileable. But if just one part of the circuitry got corrupted, the whole thing was rendered useless. 

Doc had been meticulously lighting up the area with hundreds of torches, but a stray creeper had gotten too close to the machine, and...

Well, it had caused a chain reaction of explosions. 

Now all that was left of the tunnel bore was a couple of floating slime blocks and some spare repeaters lying on the ground.

"Dammit." Doc cursed under his breath. His mind was racing, trying to see if he could salvage the machine at all. But he knew that the explosion had broken the machine beyond repair. He'd have to manually rebuild the whole thing. 

He groaned imagining the task. The whole machine had already taken hours to build the first time, not counting the extra time it had taken to collect the materials needed. Not only did he need to rebuild the whole thing, but he also needed to grab the resources too--the TNT had blown up most of the items. 

Doc started to dread the grind again, and he hadn't even started. Why did it have to go so wrong? He'd been so careful to make sure the area was mobproof, but apparently, he'd missed a spot. 

And now he had to start from scratch again. 

A firework snapped him out of his thoughts, and he glanced up to see someone flying towards him. The area the tunnel bore had cleared out was massive; there was plenty of room to fly around comfortably in here. 

Of course, that was before the machine blew up...

"Doc!" a voice called. "Where are you? This place is huge!"

"Over here," Doc yelled back. "Keep going forward, you're in the right direction."

As the figure flew closer, Doc could make out more details. The white sweater, the dark hair...it was Bdubs, alright. Doc should have known. Only Bdubs could yell that loud from that far away.

"Hey!" Bdubs slid to a stop near Doc, almost crashing into one of the remaining bits of the tunnel bore in the process. 

"Hey," Doc greeted him. "Welcome to my mine."

Bdubs let out a low whistle. "This is your mine? It's huge. You didn't mine this all out by hand, did you?"

"Nah. I used a tunnel bore machine."

Bdubs hesitated, then glanced around confusedly. "Uh...where's the machine?"

"You almost slammed into it on your way here."

Doc could almost see the lightbulb flicker on in Bdubs's head. "...Oh."

"Yeah. Freak accident. A creeper spawned in somehow, even though I'd tried to light everything up."

"That stinks," Bdubs groused. "D'you have to rebuild the whole thing again, then?"

"Yeah. Yaaaay, grind," Doc said sarcastically. 

"That's gonna be fun."

"Yeah, totally..." Doc didn't mean to sound so down about it, but he couldn't help himself. He was pretty disappointed by what had happened. 

Bdubs didn't say anything for a bit. He could probably tell what Doc was feeling just by the tone of his voice--they'd known each other for years, after all. Along with the rest of the nHo, Bdubs was probably one of the people who knew Doc the best. 

"You're dragging yourself about the machine blowing up, aren't you?" he finally asked. 

"If I say 'no', will you believe me?"

"Nope."

Doc held his hands up in surrender. "Fine. You got me."

Bdubs sighed under his breath. "You're too hard on yourself sometimes. I mean, it's not like you were the one who blew it up, right?"

"Okay, but I was the one who forgot to light up a spot along the way."

"Oh, for god's sake, there are caves all around you!" Bdubs said in an exasperated tone. "It could have dropped in from there, too, you know."

"And I could have shot it down before it got close to the machine," Doc countered. 

Bdubs let out an irritated grunt. "I feel like you're being annoying on purpose now."

Doc smirked a bit and shrugged, not revealing anything. 

"But, for real," Bdubs continued, his tone more serious. "Don't push yourself too hard, alright? It wasn't your fault that the machine blew up. Accidents happen, right? And don't feel pressured to rebuild the machine right away. Even almighty GOATs need a break," he added with a small grin.

Doc shook his head In surrender. "Did you just come here to tell me to stop overworking myself?"

Now it was Bdubs's turn to smirk and shrug, which didn't reveal anything either.

"God, I hate you."

"You're welcome!" Bdubs said cheerfully. He donned his Elytra again and waved goodbye to Doc.

"Wait, is that it?" Doc protested. "You're just leaving?"

"Oh, I think I have some spare Redstone supplies in the RedZone," Bdubs said nonchalantly. "I mean, if you need 'em I can always grab them! Unless the GOATfather wants to grind it out himself...?"

"I can never get a read on you," Doc muttered as his friend flew off. "Wait--dude, I need those resources! Can you--"

"Can't hear you, too far away!"

"God, I really hate you."